[fabsroman]

SJJ,

Welcome to the board. MT and Skeet covered it pretty well. If you are recoil sensitive, you probably should get an auto. If not, you can get a pump. Remington makes an 870 that comes with both a smoothbore barrel and a rifled barrel so that you can hunt birds and big game.

I used to use a single shotgun for hunting almost everything. That was a Browning pump, otherwise known as a BPS. Yes, the screw in rifled choke tube will work with sabot type "slugs" but not as well as a fully rifled barrel. Sabots and a fully rifled barrel will allow you to shoot "slugs" out to 100+ yards.

Today, I use a Benelli Super Black Eagle for most of my shotgun hunting. A couple of years ago, I bought an ER Shaw rifled barrel for it and a couple of recoil reducers because the BPS was loosening my fillings from its recoil. I'm not a big guy, so recoil does beat me up somewhat.

What type of hunting are you planning on doing?

As far as skeet is concerned, that was one of my big reasons for buying the Benelli auto. I took the pump gun skeet shooting one day after duck hunting because I was doing poorly with it on ducks. Generally, I shot an over/under and scored in the 20's consistantly. Shooting the pump was completely awkward. Hence, the purchase of the auto. Now, I use an auto for most of my clay shooting.